The tags #whitespace and #usesforwhitespace have been trending high on Google+ , and people have put together all kinds of funny pictures suggesting uses for it.

This paranoid one was particularly funny, as it calls to mind the totally absurd freakout when Google changed its privacy policies.

As TechCrunch points out, the redesign made Google+ into a "responsive" rather than "fixed width" Web site -- when you drag the edge of your browser window, elements on the page are rearranged instead of being cut off, like they are on Facebook. (Most other Google sites have been redesigned like this as well.) So this is probably the real reason for all that white space.

Google+ head Vic Gundotra reportedly said in a Hangout that it's not going to be used for ads.

So what will it be used for? Maybe saving and pinning interesting content, in shades of Pinterest?

Whatever the reason, the fact that people are talking about it at all has to be good news for Google+, right? Maybe it's not such a ghost town after all.